what you like riffs
you're a riff dog now all of a sudden
come on up seeing as you're going to
come on up my lesson say hello to the
people on the internet there you go
good is that enough you're getting super
cuddly today i don't know what's wrong
with you hey
you want to play riff what are you going
to play some howl and wolf
hey how you doing justin here today i
want to talk a little bit about getting
creative with riffs
so the first thing what is a riff i'm
sure some of you have heard of a riff
and it's basically a short musical motif
that gets repeated around in a song
now i'm sure you've heard the term lick
as well i tend to think of licks as
words like if you're making up a blue
solo you'd have a bunch of different
blues licks that you would put together
to make a sentence like a whole solo
riff is slightly different to that a
riff gets repeated around a lot form
part of the song sometimes you could use
them for an intro thing so you might say
the riff from smoke on the water you
know
that kind of thing could be
a recurring thing particularly like
blues you've got these sort of like uh
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but that's the idea of a riff it's just
this little short musical idea that
repeats around a lot in a song
uh early examples you've got those
things like you know pretty woman
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there are hundreds of guitar riffs
around that you're going to encounter on
your journey feel free to learn them at
any point loads of fun again it's not
something you should be scared about
just pick a riff and have a bit of a go
if you can play it great if you can't
then you need to practice it
but what i would encourage you to have a
little bit of a go at now particularly
any of you that are getting into
songwriting would be to have a go at
writing your own riff and the pentatonic
scale is a really good starting point
for a riff so
hopefully by now
you're familiar with the minor
pentatonic scale now what we're mostly
going to be concerned with
are these bottom few notes bottom few
strings maybe not even that one with a
little finger if we take that away
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and just start with those notes
have a go at creating a little riff for
yourself using just those notes and i
just mean a repeatable musical idea that
you might
play around with that you could use as a
as a foundation for a song maybe you
have a little riff for a while then it
goes into some coordinated seeing there
aren't really any rules like that but
you might go
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we might go
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or
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again one of those things that i
really encourage you to get into is this
idea of being creative within the forms
that you're learning so we've got this
minor pentatonic thing we're looking at
some blues next week but there's
definitely
an a big area here of of creativity that
you could explore if you want to you
don't have to it's not going to be part
of your practice routine but if you were
to come up with your own riff as a part
of a song maybe jamming with another
musician maybe online you meet up with
somebody and you get a riff and somebody
else has a riff and then before you know
it you've got a song and that's kind of
a cool thing you know songwriting you
know we've talked a little bit about
song form in previous lessons and song
structure and putting chords together
and even improvising within the major
scale
or this other area of the rifts
it's a little bit more open you can get
a little bit more creative with it and
while the minor pentatonic is something
that i think is a nice place to start
riffs can really go anywhere so long as
it sounds cool as long as you like the
sound of it you could make up anything i
could
mix two pentatonic scales and i am like
just making this up
but i could go one lower and one higher
and go
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that's getting pretty wacky but i could
try approaching every note from a
semitone below
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i mean it i'm just grabbing anything it
could be you try and play it backwards
you could try in anything there are any
rules but just to see what it is that
you like because songwriting is just
about making decisions about stuff that
you like
that's it
so you can just muck around you don't
have to i'm saying the pentatonic is
like just as a starting point but you
could start with anything you like but i
would encourage you to have a go at
making up a single note riff it doesn't
have to be a single note you might add
two in there at some point but i'm just
thinking like in terms of like you
render sam and these sort of riffs and
um
you know we looked at what are the other
riffs that we looked at they come as you
are that's another you know
that's a great riff that's a really good
example of a riff i don't know why i
didn't think of that one earlier but
there are just so many it's like one of
those things where people say what's
your favorite song to go like
you just can't think of the same with me
right now trying to think of great riffs
that you should check out i will make a
spotify playlist of songs that i think
have got incredible riffs and i'll leave
that on the website
on the lesson page as well but
while there aren't any actual rules i
think that rules can be a helpful thing
when you first start out and therefore
like having a go within the minor
pentatonic scale might be a good first
step but feel free to break out of it if
you want see if you can apply the same
ideas to the songwriting structure maybe
you've got one riff that's your verse
and another riff which is your chorus
another one that's the bridge maybe they
develop a little bit dynamically so some
are loud and some are quiet some are
clean some have distorted it's
completely up to you enter sandman again
nice little clean section there in the
rift and then it gets all heavy for the
other riff so
nirvana as well is a great example of
that where they have the clean kind of
roofs in the verses and the big heavy
ones for the chorus there aren't rules
here so i would really encourage you to
just explore go have some fun explore
your own creativity and see what you can
come up with i really hope you enjoyed
this lesson i'll see you for more in a
sec bye-bye